Jurors go home without reaching verdict in case of David Warren, ex-cop who shot Henry Glover

Jurors went home Tuesday without reaching a verdict in the retrial of David Warren, a former New Orleans police officer who shot and killed Henry Glover after Hurricane Katrina.

After about six hours of deliberations, U.S. District Judge Lance Africk read a note from jurors that said, "We have not moved forward in about two hours. Can we table and resume at 8:30 tomorrow?"

Warren is charged with violating Glover's civil rights and using a firearm during a crime of violence. The trial, which came more than eight years after the shooting, is Warren's second. His conviction and 25-year sentence were scrapped last year after an appeals court found he was unfairly tried alongside officers who orchestrated a grisly cover-up that involved burning Glover's body in a car and leaving it atop an Algiers levee.

He stood trial alone this time.

Story by

Juliet Linderman

and Naomi Martin

Staff writers

"It's been a nightmare sitting here reliving this all over again," said Glover's aunt Rebecca Glover, as she waited for the verdict. Both families - Warren's wife and five children, and the Glovers - huddled in separate circles with their supporters at opposite ends of a courtroom hallway, praying in hushed tones.

Warren's wife, Kathy Warren, left the courthouse without commenting.

The jury's deliberations come after four days of testimony and two days of jury selection -- a truncated trial originally set to last two weeks.

Prosecutors painted Warren, 50, as a sharpshooter who fired a single, fatal shot at Glover as he went to pick up a stolen suitcase because Warren believed all looters - even those desperate for food, water and supplies in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - were "animals that deserved to be shot."

"David Warren did not shoot Henry Glover because he had to because his life was being threatened. He shot Henry Glover because he could," Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracey Knight told the jury during closing arguments. "It was Katrina, and no one was watching."

The prosecutor added: "Warren thought that no one would really care about this man."

Warren took the stand in his own defense for nearly five hours on Monday, telling the jury that he feared for his life because he believed Glover was holding a gun in his hand when he charged at the gate of the mall Warren was guarding.

Warren's attorney, Julian Murray, told the jury during closing arguments that Warren had to make a kill-or-be-killed decision in a "nano-second."

"This whole idea that (Glover) got shot because he went to pick up a suitcase is not correct," Murray said. "What Mr. Warren knew is that certain looters had burned down a mall. A police officer had been shot in the head by looters, and this is what he's facing when they were running towards the door."